Every day at the National Archives, we fulfill veterans' requests for copies of their military records that document their service to our country. The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, MO is an office of the National Archives, which has over 80 million permanent records and receives over 5,000 requests for military records … Continue reading Happy Veterans Day!
While I was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries, E. Forbes Smiley III stole more than 70 maps from our Map Division and Rare Books division. Only 33 of the maps were ever recovered. Mr. Smiley was a rare map dealer, and a trusted friend of the New York Public … Continue reading The Impact of Theft
Federal agencies' Facebook posts, YouTube videos, blog posts, and tweets... are all of these Federal records? Increasingly, Federal agencies are using web 2.0 and social media tools to quickly and effectively communicate with the public. These applications, sites, and tools encourage public participation and increase our ability to be more open and transparent. The informal … Continue reading Are these Records?
Since my swearing in as the 10th Archivist of the United States less than a year ago, we've taken important steps to become a more open, transparent, participatory, and collaborative agency. I'm proud of our accomplishments: The development of our Open Government Plan A 300 percent increase in the use of social media tools to … Continue reading Open to Change
Last Wednesday, I celebrated the 235th birthday of the U.S. Navy at the USS Constitution Museum at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. It was a fun event full of hometown pride and spirited debate. I brought with me Senior Archivist Trevor Plante and original records from the National Archives to discuss the Revolutionary origins … Continue reading Hometown Rivalries Debate the Birthplace of the U.S. Navy
While visiting the National Archives at San Francisco this summer, the Director, Daniel Nealand, introduced me to a rare and fascinating audio recording of an Alcatraz prisoner. The recording was recovered from a 1947 SoundScriber disc within Record Group 129, Records of the Bureau of Prisons at the National Archives. The recording is twelve and … Continue reading Croutons, Pepper, and the Hole
Recently, I read an article and book by Charlene Li, an expert on social media and former analyst and vice president at Forrester Research. In the book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, she states that greater openness in organizations is inevitable and is a consequence of the increasing use … Continue reading Leading an Open Archives
Today we celebrate the 223rd anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of the United States. On this date in 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the Constitution. At the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., where the Constitution is on permanent display in the Rotunda, there is a celebration planned. … Continue reading Happy Constitution Day!
In a letter to Ebenezer Hazard on February 18, 1791, Thomas Jefferson said, ...let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident. … Continue reading Was Your Ancestor a Revolutionary War Spy?
Last Wednesday, I visited the Huntington Library in California to receive the original Nuremberg Laws on behalf of the U.S. Government. The laws were signed by Adolf Hitler and issued by the Third Reich in 1935. The Nuremberg Laws will become part of the National Archives Gift Collection. http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/MEG9z_0OLyo?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&border=1 The Nuremberg Laws were the anti-Semitic … Continue reading The Nuremberg Laws
